THE COTTAGE GAEDENER. 
Eeeruaby lO. 
362 
and more of them, and with only two pinkish flowers 
on a stalk. 
CoLLANiA Andinajiarcana. —Erom the lofty moimtains 
of Andinamarca in Peru. A splendid thing certainly; 
half-a-dozen flowers, or more, of a beautiful pink colour 
mixed with yellow, hanging down in a close bunch from 
the top of the stalk, and not unlike the flowers of some 
JJlandfordia. 
CoLLAN[A iNvoLucRosA.—Is a Still more noble plant, 
and the best of the genus known to us. The flowers are 
large, very long, for this genus; the stamens longer, and 
the style longest of all; the colour a delicate pale yellow 
tinged with green. It has not been brought over alive 
yet; but it must come. It grows at St. Mateo, near 
Culluay, or some such name, in Peru, where it blooms 
in November. They all want the same treatment as 
Bomareas. 
CoNANTHERA BIFOLIA aud Sijisii.—We Call these bulbs 
Conanthers, and of all the bulbs in the world they are 
the most difficult to deal with by the gardener. Bota¬ 
nists, I believe, were nearly in a fix with them some 
twenty years back (see Cummingia), but now the whole 
group, and there are not many of them, is placed in a 
transition state. To understand what that state is, let 
us suppose the Lilytvorts to be an irregular field of say, 
corn, having another regular field lying a little way off 
beyond it. This second field, let us imagine to be 
Amaryllids; then the “little way,” or isthmus, or narrow 
piece of laud between the Lilies and the Amaryllids are 
occupied be the Conanthers. Twenty years ago they 
tliought Conanthers were irne Amaryllids; but now, that 
these things are better known, it is found that they are 
only “ Squills with the ovary (seed-pod) partially adher¬ 
ing to the calyx and corolla,” or, as above, in the transi¬ 
tion state. We gardeners are worse off than this, for 
none of us can keep them for any length of time, and 
never flower them but once, and that only if we happen 
to get them from their native places in a fresh state. They 
come from the most singular climate on the face of the 
globe, that of Coquimbo, the northern part of Chili 
which borders on Peru, being that part of the coast 
where rain ceases, where the little rain that does fall 
hardly ever sinks three inches deep in the barren, hungry 
soil. Bulbs from this province (Coquimbo) have hitherto 
defied our ordinary rules of cultivation. Under Cum- 
niinyia I shall give my own latest notions about the 
way we ought to deal with them; suffice it to-day to 
record my last trials of them. Mrs. Wray, of Chelten¬ 
ham, had a large importation of bulbs from the plains of 
Coquimbo, twelve distinct species, with a statement of 
the sizes and the colour and habit of the flowers. Eind- 
ing them sulky they were all sent to me; and I am sure 
that seven, if not eight of them were never described by 
any English author. I tried them experimentally for 
eight years, and only flowered one, a Leuoocoryne. The 
Conanthers are very low plants with blue flowers, but 
they are not true bulbs, as represented in our books, but 
tuberous-rooted plants, with the habit of bulbs. Sep¬ 
tember and October (the spring months in Coquimbo) 
is their season to begin their gi’owth; and if hard frost 
is kept from them it is all they want, and I believe they 
would grow well in sand. If any of our readers could 
send me bulbs from this coast, carriage-free, I think I 
could find an easy way to flower them. 
CooPERiA. —This is a genus of small bulbs, natives of 
Texas, whence they were sent by Drummond. There 
are only two species, or kinds, of them known to us, and 
one of them {pedunculata) with a stalk or peduncle 
comes so near Zephyranthes as to have deceived some 
writers. There is a figure of it in Sweet’s “ British 
Elower Garden,” but not very true, under the name 
Zephyranthes pedunculata. Tiie late Professor Graham 
called it Sceptranthus Drnnimondii. The one called 
Chlorosolen in our Dictionary is only a slight variety 
from the stalkless (sessile) one called Drummondii. Both 
are all but hardy, and prefer a sandy border in the open 
air, where they flower from Midsummer till late in the 
autuDiu, without leaves, and ripen seeds freely. The 
scape has but one flower, and when that is over, the 
seed-pod begins to ripen, and up comes another scape to 
go the same round, -and so on they go till after the leaves 
rise in October. 
CooPERiA Drummondii. —The flower scape of this 
species rises four or five inches high, and the flower 
stands upright on the top of it. The tube of this 
flower is nearly as long as the scape, or rather longer 
than the tube of Fuchsia corymhifiora, and about the 
same size and shape, greenish at first, but dying oli a 
faint pink colour. The top part, or opening of the 
flower, is not unlike a large white Chinese Primrose, 
only that there are six divisions in the flower. This 
and the next one open the flowers only at night; but 
once open, they stand so for three or four days, and 
then fade with a blush tint The way to show them off, 
is to have from twelve to twenty bulbs in a patch. 
There is no difficulty in getting a stock of them, even 
from one root, the first season, and the seeds ought to 
be sown, exactly like Ixia seeds, early in October. 
Cooi’ERiA PEDUNCULATA. —A shorter tube to the flower, 
and the flower having a stalk and peduncle, is all the 
difference between this and the last. The leaves of both 
are flat, very narrow, a little milky-green, and from a toot 
to eighteen inches long. Although they come very near 
Zephyranthes in affinity, and to Z. atamasco in locality, 
the latter growing in the southern parts of Carolina, 
the two families must not be planted togetlier, because 
every species of Zepjhyranthes, without exception, goes 
to rest during the winter, while Cooperia is in full 
growth. Will any of them cross with Z. Candida? a 
plant very unlike them in appearance, but differing very 
little from them in the private mark, that is, botanically. 
Chinuji. —If it were generally known that some kinds 
of Crinum are as hardy as the new Gladioli, much 
easier to cross, and that they run into forms and colours, 
with which nothing that ever appeared in a Dutch Tulip 
can vie, surely people would grow them out in the 
borders, wliere they only require strong, rich soil, such 
as would suit brocoli and beans, and abundance of 
water for three or four months during hot summers, 
and in very hard winters to cover the holders with 
three inches of littery dung from the stable or framing 
ground. The largest and the best specimens that we 
have yet seen of the Japan Lilies are not to he com¬ 
pared in beauty or stateliness to some hardy crosses of 
the genus Crinum that we have seen, and yet the best 
of the original species, Forbesianum, has never been 
brought in contact with breeders till the summer of 
1852. I have now only two bulb correspondents, and 
one of them thinks he has effected a cross last summer 
with the pollen of Crinum Forbesii, a splendid large 
bulb, from the banks of the Delagoa Iliver, on the 
south-east coast of Africa, having from thirty to forty 
large flowers on a tall scape, as rich in colour, and 
something in the same way, as the flowers oi Passijiora 
kermesina [latissime purpureis). Now, this Crinum is 
just as hardy as Gladiolus p)siUacinus, from the self¬ 
same locality; and yet you will not meet with one 
gardener out of five hundred who ever even heard the 
name of it. When I say that the best-known Crinum 
in England is a stove plant called ^mahile, that it is a 
cross between two others (procerum and zeylianicum), 
neither of which are half so handsome as Forbesii, and 
that it is quite possible to have much finer Crinums 
than Amabile, and hardy enough to flower out-of-doors 
with us, not only that, but that such bulbs are already 
in existence, and that they do flower from May to Octo¬ 
ber every year, surely it is time to ask amateurs to take 
up the genus Crinum for cross-breeding, and to sell the 
